


Cruel Summer

by admiralheywood



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019), Sanditon - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Jane Austen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralheywood/pseuds/admiralheywood
Summary: What we could have seen if the camera hadn't had the audacity to pan out on the clifftop kiss scene, and then some.Inspired by Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift:And I scream, “For whatever it’s worth I love you,ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?”He looks up, grinning like a devil
Relationships: Sidney Parker/Charlotte Heywood
Comments: 14
Kudos: 83





	Cruel Summer

The wind whipped around them but was yet unnoticed by the pair. Anyone could have seen them, standing there, intertwined on the clifftop. But thoughts of propriety were wiped clean from the minds of both Charlotte and Sidney. 

Rough hands gently cup Charlotte’s face, keeping her unruly curls at bay. She could not fathom how this, whatever this was, could be real. Not a month ago, he hadn’t given her so much as a glance unless he was giving a leveling critique of her character. And now, here he was, full pink lips moving between her own. She could feel the slight scratch of his beard on her freckled nose and cheeks. His hands were wrapped around her waist, holding her flush to his taught frame. He felt like a coil, ready to snap. 

They pulled back, both chests heaving from their embrace. 

His voice rumbles between the space between them, only inches as their foreheads tilted against each other in a combination of affection and exertion. 

“Charlotte,” 

Her eyes flutter shut at the sound of her name from his reddened lips. 

“Charlotte,” he repeats. 

“Mr. Parker,” she breaths. Opening her eyes to find his ever-steady gaze locked on hers. She fought to draw breath.

“Charlotte do you trust me?” he murmurs, hands clutching tightly at the fabric of her dress, desperate to feel her warm body underneath. 

“I… I think I ought not to” she replied, stumbling on her words. His jaw clenched. 

“But I would like to Sidney” she added, feeling feverish. He drew a deep breath and released it as if choked by the breeze. Charlotte could feel the disrupted air tickle her face. 

He pulled his face away from hers now and tilted her chin upwards towards his gaze, his arms still circled around her waist.

“I do not suppose you will tell me why I do not deserve your trust Miss Heywood?” he rumbled. 

“I thought you preferred when I reserved judgment,” she quipped, a half-smile quirked on her lips. 

His chest clenched at her wide eyes, searching his face for meaning.

“No.” he sighed. “No that is not true at all.” 

“The truth is,” he continued roughly, “I would not be half so in love with you if I did not see how clearly you know your own mind.” His gaze fell to the edges of her skirts toying with the ruffled grass. 

His words sat alone in the buffeting winds, tempered by their flushed bodies. He could hear his heart beating his ears. He did not know if he could endure another heartbreak, and he felt certain that Charlotte would leave him more shattered than the last. 

Charlotte meanwhile squinted at his downturned face in disbelief. The echoes of Georgiana’s warnings against Sidney faded to nothing as she studied the features she had first gazed upon in his likeness. The strong brow and long lashes, the straight nose, and strong jaw. She would let herself believe him, she decided, for she wanted to believe him and her naivety was, this time, in her favor.

“I should not have expected this Mr. Par-” she began, her fingers toying with the soft muslin of her dress.

“Sidney. Call me Sidney please” he interrupted, his gaze snapped upward, hot on her flushed face. 

“Sidney”, she repeated, as if testing how the letters felt on her tongue. 

A beat passed between them. He swore he could feel his heart in his throat.

“I cannot explain why,” she started. “For you do not have much to recommend you,” she smiled. “And yet, I do not know what this feeling could be, if not love.” Her tone lifting as if her words formed a question. 

Sidney’s face broke into a rare smile that transformed his hard features and his eyes seemed to glow golden in his joy. 

“I do not deserve you” he muttered before pulling her body against him once more, their arms tangled between them, grasping at whatever inch available. 

Charlotte felt her senses ignite. Her vision was consumed by his face, now tilted down to meet her lips once again. She could taste the remnants of a cigar on his tongue and could smell the sweet tar residue on his jacket. Her cheeks burned where he trailed his fingers across her skin. 

Nothing could have prepared her for this. All she knew for certain was the man who she had told herself to put from her mind because he could not be hers, was now kissing her with a passion she had only imagined in her most solitary moments. 

She gasped into his mouth as his hands reached to grip her curls at the back of her head, angling her chin to slot his lips between hers. He responded in turn, groaning at the sound of his effect on her and the fervor with which she met his lips.

He rested his hands at the juncture where her neck met her shoulders, curving his fingers around the gentle slope. 

“Lay down” he gasped between kisses. He felt her comply and quickly followed her movements, startled by and unwilling to lose contact with her body thrumming beneath his touch.

Charlotte tugged at her skirts, straightening the folds with trembling hands. Sidney came to rest on his knees at her folded feet, his brown eyes searching her own. 

“I… you must know I am not nearly as practiced in this as you are,” she trailed off, her eyes focused on the horizon over the sea, while her bare fingers fidgeted with a blade of grass beneath her.

“Darling” he breathed. “I would not presume to expect anything from you, but you have far from disappointed me if that is your worry, quite the opposite in fact,” he concluded, the intensity of his gaze only heightened by his arousal. 

Sidney shifted forward on his heels, so his weight rested in his hands, framing her torso. 

He spoke softly, “Charlotte, darling, please look at me”. Her eyes traveled away from the vacant sky to his face hovering above hers.

“Promise me you will tell me if you want to stop,” he rasped, searching her eyes for apprehension. She only nodded in response, quite overwhelmed by the sight of him poised above her. 

“Charlotte promise me, I need to hear it from your own lips” he repeated. 

She bit her bottom lip, “I promise” she exhaled.

His heart leapt as he moved down to capture her lips within his own once again, sucking at her full bottom lip to bring blood rushing to the surface. Her hands fumbled at the sleeves of his overcoat, tugging it off of his broad shoulders. He sat up, pulling both the coat and vest beneath off and flung in the grass, leaving him kneeling between her legs in only his billowing white undershirt. 

Only a heartbeat later Sidney leaned forward again, this time leaving her lips to trail hot kisses down her jaw to where her ear met her neck. There he sucked lightly at the sensitive skin with his teeth, flitting out his tongue to cool the pulsing skin. 

Charlotte’s lip parted with the rush of her exhalation. Spots erupted behind her eyelids, as Sidney trailed his lips down to her collarbone, pausing in his journey downwards to pepper open-mouthed kisses along the delicate bone. 

Her hands moved from his narrow waist to run through his hair, earning a moan from him as she roughly intertwined her fingers into his cropped curls. 

Her day dress now seemed impractical, especially it’s high and straight-across neckline. Sidney growled at its impertinence to block his methodical route towards her swelling breasts. 

Charlotte, upon hearing his frustration vocalized, lifted her head, which felt about a million pounds with the rushing blood. 

“Sidney what is it?”, dismayed by the interruption to what she thought had been their mutual bliss. 

“It’s this damned dress, it is… it is much too conservative for these activities Charlotte” he complained in a low tone. 

“Are you implying that I should have dressed accordingly?!” she exclaimed, “Sidney how should I have known when neither of us has ever alluded to anything of the sort?!”

“Of course not my dear.” He sighed “My frustration is with the tedious fabrics, not the woman underneath. Although I do wish she would have chosen a different outfit for the occasion, I grant you.” he ended, grinning smugly. 

“Well yes... “ she responded trepidatiously, “I cannot deny if I had known… I would have chosen differently for myself as well,” she gained confidence as she spoke, “but I cannot be expected to wear a ball gown to walk with you, sir!” 

“No you must certainly cannot my dear, and now I believe it is time for us to return. I expect Mary is wondering where we have got to,” he said, smiling up at her, with his chin resting on her breastbone. 

Charlotte blushed upon hearing her friend’s name, recollecting the knowing looks she had given Charlotte as she had departed with Sidney for town. She pushed herself up, leaning on her elbows, unbothered by the inevitably of grass stains on the white fabric. Sidney rose with her, his head lifting from her chest to follow so they both lay back on the grass. 

Charlotte turned her body to him, propping herself on her wrist, and he turned his head to meet her glinting gaze. 

“What now?” she directed at him

“Now,” he started with the low rumbling voice he usually reserved for business meetings, “we agree that we have entered into an understanding and that I will, once I have corresponded with your parents, make you an offer of my hand.”

“And I will say yes, will I?” she snarked, “Mr. Parker you will have to do more than just kiss me to make me forget your rudeness upon our first acquaintance, and most meetings after?!” she exclaimed sardonically, tinged with fondness. 

“What did you call me?” she asked herself mockingly as he gazed at her quick-moving lips and dimpled cheeks, “oh yes, a maid” she widened her eyes comically. 

His smile widened as he dropped his head in a mock display of shame, “you are right Charlotte, I will have to do much more than kiss you to make amends for my cruelty to you, and I plan to” he said in his low tone, grinning devilishly as he looked up through his eyelashes. 

“Very well then it is settled,” she said, her words merrily skipping along, “we shall write to my father with the news tonight, before the ball.” 

“Yes,” he responded, his dark eyes filled with tenderness and hope, “yes I should like that very much Charlotte.” 

She opened her mouth to reply, but in a most uncharacteristic turn, she found she had nothing to say. She was quite spellbound by it all.

They fell into companionable silence, reveling in the ability to stare, unimpeded by interruptions or their own embarrassment. 

“We really must be going now” he interrupts, shaking them out of their reverie. He stood and began to button up his discarded layers, as she took measures to straighten her windswept hair and skirts. 

He reached down to grab her slim hands, and with little effort heaved her to her feet. They stood there, chests pressed together once more, content in their seclusion from Sanditon and its many dramas. 

Sidney leaned forward, kissing her forehead. “Let us go down my love, or they will surely think we have tumbled into the sea”. 

“Yes,” she quietly laughed, “yes we must prevent worry on our behalf, poor Tom and Mary have enough to contend with as is.” 

And with that they turned, her arm tucked neatly into the crook of his own, and walked towards the town laid out below them, with the glittering sea beyond. 

“I would have thought that by now I would be used to the splendor of the scenery, and yet I am just as awestruck as when I first arrived,” commented Charlotte, her eyes passing over the lush meadows rising above the town. 

“Yes, quite right... although,” he added “Tom was wrong when he described Sanditon to me as the most beautiful sight in all of England, for that prize, my dear, is allowed only for you.


End file.
